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Today it was announced that our precious little state of South Australia has a new logo. We seem to rebrand ourselves more than other states for some unknown reason. Many people are not too happy with it and comments range from “why is SA not even in this” to “where is Tasmania?” then “now everyone is really going to point and say SA is a hole” and “This looks like an ad for a housing development”. Clearly it’s not fabulous but to be honest there are always going to be critics.

To be honest I don’t know a lot about how this logo came to be and the criteria of design so maybe I missed something.

EDIT: I found out that Brand South Australia was created “At the request of the Premier, The Economic Development Board was tasked to bring together a group made up of communications, marketing and policy professionals from government and the private sector to develop the brand. This group was chaired by Darren Thomas, from the Economic Development Board”. They did a lot of research into what is South Australia and asked locals about their thoughts about what makes our state great – however it doesn’t seem that they consulted the public on the actual logo design,

This is the logo that was chosen. It has the social media details of Jay Weatherill the states Premier on it. That is funny because he obviously does understand, or is trying to, the power of Social media (bless) but didn’t harness it to its true potential in this case.

In an age where we are hyper connected and its easy to get the public involved in having their say, this would have been a great opportunity to engage social media to present the public with a few options. Maybe 2o. Some graphic design students could have given it a go as part of a uni assignment and whipped up something great. Who knows?

A PR campaign opportunity to bring South Aussies together may have been lost. Let’s unite in a big warm fuzzy hug with love for our state hey? Come on everyone!

I’m not sure if the agency who created this (not sure who created it sorry), thought to upsell to the government perhaps a website with a voting functionality with some simple social media sharing buttons…. that wouldn’t have cost a lot and would have been cool. People would have liked to vote, have a chat about it and see the result. If the result was bad, well at least you could say the public chose it.

I just took a couple of minutes and whipped up some ideas that I think really should be considered. Sure, i’m not an artist (CLEARLY) and I do have a sense of humour but I think these are a good starting point to get the thoughts flowing. Which do you like best? (notice I made a poll in about 10 minutes)

1. – SA- We ❤ Popeye.

I think this tells the rest of the states that hey, we might have a creek of a river compared to what they have, we do have a cool boat called Popeye and we are darn proud of that. It’s even mentioned in a Peter Combe song.

2. – SA – We have balls.

This sort of is self explanatory. If you haven’t been to Adelaide, a. where the heck are you and b. we have 2 giant silver balls in the middle of our mall. It’s a thing. Side note, I once met Zac Hanson (yes MMMBop and all that) in Rundle Mall and I asked him if he had seen the malls balls. He looked confused and walked off. I’m sure the fact that our mall has balls really made an impact on his life.

3. – SA is Neato!

Come on! Let’s be positive. I really like this one. At a glance it says all you need to to say. It has a smiley face telling people that we are really friendly (that will make them forget the number of murders), the face is inside a picture of the state and also it states that the state is neato! Winning! I want to visit already!

About Belinda

Belinda works in social media marketing and is a music lover, fashion observer, social media junkie and all round fun lady. She wants to be your friend and talk marketing with you! She is now talking in 3rd person.

Marketing Nabbed seeks to pinpoint interesting and creative marketing topics and discuss them in detail so as to "nab" marketing in the act. Please feel free to join in the discussion and post your comments.

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